Yes, it appears that time wasting is sometimes infuriating and unavoidable. Not the type of time wasting that I've displayed on here previously in the form of intricately Photoshopped celebs magically burying their nose in my comic, but the particular breed of time wasting that is far beyond my control and has no-one really to blame except the slippery hands of fate. So, as I shake my fist at the sky, you may read further about my woeful tale of woe.
A few weeks ago I was contacted by the Sheffield based events organizers Unquiet Desperation to see if I'd like to get involved in an Art Fair that they are putting together. They said I'd be able to sell some comics and whatever other random bits of merch I could drag together and get involved in some live art that'd be taking place on some big boards n' what not in one of my old Sheffield haunts Bungalows & Bears on Saturday 17th October 2009, which is now tomorrow.. but probably won't be tomorrow unless you are reading through this rant in a very specific moment in a potentially vast stretch of time.
Anyway, as much as I adore the stench and general mental torture on offer for a very reasonable price from the pink-faced drivers of 'Le Mega Bus', I couldn't really get the time off my weekend pencil pushing job, so I contacted the nice folks in charge of the event and proposed the idea of me producing some big drawings of some stuff that I could post up to them and perhaps someone up there could kindly paste the big cut-outs around the live art walls and up in the toilets n' shit like that.
Here's a couple of bits.. A decapitated, blood-splurting skull and a slightly more considered take on the classic squirting cock n' balls toilet wall favourite. I drew them all straight on to big bits of A1 white paper with a Sharpie.. no marking out in pencil, just proper do-or-die steez! This is a great way of drawing as where ever the line takes you just becomes the new direction of the picture. Each separate character or speech bubble or whatever it happened to be, I then cut out with a neat white trim surrounding each shape.
Here are two more pieces that kind of show how the different components could've been arranged by whoever happened to be pasting the work up for me at the show. Different heads could've popped off different bodies that were using different speech bubbles, and I kind of imagined that the different elements could've probably interacted with what the oher artists were producing at the event live, with my speech bubbles maybe coming out of their characters mouths etc. etc. This one is also the first example of the whole self-referential theme that I was going for with the work, where specific products that I was selling at the Art Fair were modeled by these weird characters that would potentially adorn the surrounding walls. This stumpy legged, headless chicken is wearing one of the Heebie Jeebies t-shirts that I recently designed. The little fellah is also spittin' some (MF) DOOM lyrics (out of his neckhole!) from the Madvillain song 'Figaro' or my preferred version 'No Brain' from the equally as good as the original (if not better) 'Madvillainy II' remix album. The t-shirts will be for sale at the event as well as at the Jeebies' upcoming shows and I shouldn't need to tell you where the DOOM albums are for sale, as every good home should come fully equipped with his entire back catalogue anyway.
More product placement here where a chopped-off hand takes out a very swish looking 'Good Ship Sheffield' shopper bag and shouts "Sweet!" from its bleeding wrist. These bags are also gonna be on sale at the Art Fair and are already for sale at The Old Sweet Shop in Nether Edge. All the proceeds for every bag sold will go to The upcoming Sharrow Lantern Festival... which is nice.
And here's the final case of me getting my own drawings to endorse my various wares, with another headless chicken getting his head popped off by the sheer awesome power of Pictorial Showboat. The skull heads could've potentially been positioned to look like they'd just popped off the chicken bodies (wacky) and the dog turd bearing the phrase 'Tom Newell is the shit' but with the 'the' crossed out could've been placed under the chicken's unsuspecting foot.. (zany)
These two skulls were a bit smaller than the other stuff 'cos I did them to use up the odd bits of space left on the big bits of paper after all the main pieces were done. All the skulls were basic references to the one on the cover of Pictorial Showboat #1.
Oh, and this last photo is of some bits that you've already seen in the photos above, but just demonstrates how there would've been different ways to display the various pieces. I say 'would've' as a result of the next part of the story, which I will continue to carefully unfold for you here.
I got all the drawings done with plenty of time to get them up to Sheffield where they were to be displayed, but as I feared that the postal strike would affect their journey, I contacted a friend who works in London during the week and travels back up to Sheffield every Friday evening where he spends the weekend with his family. He kindly agreed to courier the carefully rolled original drawings along with ten copies of my comic (and a complimentary copy for himself) up North where someone associated with the Art Fair would meet him and receive the drawings and comics, and eventually the work would be unrolled and wallpaperpasted onto the specially placed boards at the venue... probably some in the toilets too where they would've stayed for a while as the bogs in Bungalows are kind of like a community graffiti art project with new stickers and tags popping up all the time.
This was not to be... We met up at an exhibition opening of a jolly good show of paintings by Kate Marshall down Vyner Street, and the bag containing the drawings you have seen above exchanged hands. We then went our separate ways and my friend (who shall remain unamed and unshamed, unless he wants to be named and shamed to avoid any future responsibilities of this nature!) went to a few pubs on the way back home and lost the bag somewhere along the way.
If, by some miraculous succession of events, you happen to chance upon this recently orphaned bag and scour its contents to find my website address on the back page of one of the eleven comics in there, and then go on to the website where you are confronted with this whole tragic tale of loss right here in these very words, then I don't suppose that there would be much you could do about it anyway. It's very doubtful that the drawings will reach the event that they were intended for now, so all I can really hope for now is that the lost property in question finds its way into the hands of someone who appreciates it, and doesn't go down the lonesome road of being slowly transferred from bin to slightly larger bin and then inevitably into landfill.
C'est la vie, these things happen for a reason and there's plenty more carefully rolled original drawings in the sea. Perhaps they will fall into the hands of a crazy person and I will be worshipped as a God in a far away galaxy. Perhaps drawing them wasn't such a waste of time. I've certainly used a considerable amount of time salvaging the only (slightly crappy) mobile phone pictures I have left of the work and stringing the whole ordeal into a new form of work in the shape of this blog post.
Oh twisted web of fate, how you continually mock me and delight me in equal measures. I'll stop shaking a disgruntled fist up at your imaginary position and raise a glass instead.
Here's to you and to all those you've shat on or lifted to dizzying heights.
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